Aria: A Cat's Tail
by catburglar93
Summary: A young man from our world finds himself inside the body of a cat in the Aria universe. Which cat? President Aria, of course! [ONESHOT]


"The city of Neo-Venezia on Aqua is modeled after the city of Venice on Earth. Like Venice, Neo-Venezia is built almost entirely on water. Today, it is Aqua's largest exporter of glass and textiles, and is famous for its peaceful atmosphere and friendly local population."

The female tour guide led the group through the square, pointing out significant buildings and landmarks along the way. She motioned toward a large multi-story building on her right.

"This is the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana," she explained, "You may recognize it as a recreation of the National Library of St. Mark in Venice." The tour group ooh'd and aah'd obligingly as she pointed toward the decorated arches and columns of the library, and proceeded to describe the process by which the building had been constructed.

One of the tourists, an elderly woman with a kind smile, approached her.

"It's such a lovely building. Might we have a few minutes to take pictures with it?"

The tour guide responded with a polite smile of her own.

"Of course, madam. Please take as much time as you need."

As her group broke off into smaller groups of two and three, the tour guide let out a long-repressed sigh. She had skipped breakfast that day, and was harboring an irritating headache because of it. It was unlike her to skip meals, she would later reflect, but to tell the truth, she had _completely_ forgotten to eat that morning. Something had seemed uncomfortably _off _to her the entire day.

She'd catch phantasms moving in her peripheral vision only to find that there was nothing there when she'd turn her head to look; at times she'd feel a gnawing sensation in the back of her skull, as though someone or something was staring at her from the shadows, but just as before, when she'd turn her head to look, she'd see nothing. Strangest of all, was an encounter she'd had earlier that morning with a white cat, which had given her a look so human and so unnatural to see on the face of an animal, that a chill had run down her spine at the sight of it. Try as she might, though, she couldn't prove any of it; logically it was all in her imagination.

She wondered idly if the stress of her job was finally beginning to get the better of her. While it was true that mental illness had no previous history in her family, she could be the first in her line, she thought somewhat frightfully. She resolved to schedule an appointment at the doctor's office as soon as possible after the day's tour. If nothing else, she was late on her yearly flu shot.

Today was a beautiful day, she mused. Not a single cloud could be seen for miles on end. The weather in Neo-Venezia was perfect as usual. Spring flowers had just begun to bloom the previous weekend and local children were playing games of hide-and-seek in the park. The city's undines had finally shed off their heavy Winter uniforms for lighter summer garments.

Days like this were common in Neo-Venezia. The weather in the city was carefully monitored by giant floating machines called Salamander Balloons, which helped keep Aqua's climate hospitable for human life. Having come from Earth, or Manhome as Neo Venetians affectionately called it, she welcomed the predictability of the weather in Neo-Venezia. Long ago, humanity had destroyed the Earth's environment, and human beings were still working to repair the damage that had been done over the course of many centuries. Violent, destructive weather had become an unavoidable part of life on Earth outside of the cities, but vacations to Aqua gave Earthlings like herself a welcome escape from the harsh conditions of their home planet.

A familiar, lustful aroma caught her attention: _coffee_. The tour guide eyed the nearby cafe desperately, wondering if anyone in her group would notice if she slipped away for a few minutes to grab a quick drink.

As desperately as she wanted to satisfy her hunger, though, she knew that it was her duty to attend to her clients first. Putting on a forced air of joviality, she walked up to the tour group to continue her job.

"Shall we proceed with the tour then?" She asked cheerfully.

The elderly woman who had requested the break turned to her in acknowledgement. A young girl, probably the woman's granddaughter, shyly tugged on her left sleeve, a look of hard determination on her face.

"The child desires to take a picture with you. Would that be acceptable, miss?"

The tour guide nodded, lowering herself to the girl's level. A true, genuine smile graced her pretty features at that moment as she remembered herself as a child. "Yes, that would be acceptable," she responded quietly, her previous discomfort all but gone. It was moments like this that reminded her why she had decided to move to Neo-Venezia in the first place and become a tour guide.

In the shadows, a white, overweight cat observed the group with unnatural attentiveness.

* * *

It was now afternoon, and the tour guide was leading a different group around the city.

"Perhaps this city's greatest attraction, and most well known, is its guided gondolier tours. In order to become a professional gondolier, or undine, an aspiring student must undergo years of rigorous training under the tutelage of a senior from one of the city's three main gondolier companies: Himeya Company, Aria Company and Orange Planet."

She began detailing the structure of gondolier companies in Neo-Venezia, starting with Pairs then moving on to Singles until finally reaching the rank of President. When arriving on the subject of the President, the cat, who had been tailing the tour guide the whole day, leaned in attentively.

"The highest official title in a gondolier company is not the title of Prima or the title of Manager, but the title of President. The President of a gondolier company theoretically has the power to override all decisions made by the Manager and those below her. Fortunately, though, President is more of a symbolic title than a functional one, as the President of a gondolier company is nothing more than a house cat!" The tour group chuckled at this, finding the prospect of a feline president absurd.

The tour guide grinned in good humor. "Of course, the President of a gondolier company can't just be _any_ cat, but a blue-eyed cat specifically. The color blue represents the color of the sea, and gondoliers believe that having a blue-eyed cat within their company will bring good fortune. Does anyone have any questions about the three major gondolier companies in Neo-Venezia or about the structure of gondolier companies?"

When no one raised their hand, the subject changed from gondoliers to architecture, and as the tour guide began to drone on about a triumphal arc that could be found in front of the city's marketplace, the cat that had been following the group slowed its pace, having lost interest in the tour.

"I love history as much as the next guy," the cat quipped, "but none of this explains how I wound up here!"

The cat - no, young man stuck in a cat's body – had already figured out that he was in an anime world. _Aria: The Animation_, to be exact. Or perhaps it was the manga?

He had no recollection as to how he had arrived in said anime world, and he briefly wondered if he was dead.

The last thing he clearly remembered was being at party in honor of his college graduation. All of his friends had been there, as well as, surprisingly, some of his professors. The party had gotten pretty wild, though, toward the end. He distinctly remembered one of the professors, a busty 40 year-old with three kids, taking off her top and singing _God __Bless America _at the top of her lungs in a severely intoxicated state. Given the nature of the party, it was highly probable that he had unwittingly overdosed on something he had been given, and was now in a coma.

Reincarnation was also a possibility he considered; though he ruled that one out because he didn't want to accept the possibility that he would never return home. As much as he hated certain parts of his life, he loved his friends and family dearly, and he did not want to lose them. Besides, it would be horribly inconvenient for him to have to find a new set of friends and family, even if they were cool anime ones.

He decided to focus on the things about his situation he _could_ figure out at the moment, placing exactly how he had ended up in the world of _Aria_ on the back burner. Two things were undeniably true about his present situation: for one, he wasn't dreaming. He had heard of vivid, lifelike dreams like this before; people reported traveling back in time, traveling to different worlds, meeting spirits, and ghosts of loved ones inside dreams, but he knew that if one broke the logical barrier while dreaming, the dream would collapse in on itself, forcing the body to wake up. Okay, well, he didn't exactly know that one for sure, but he had seen _ Inception, _and that was close enough, right?

To test out this theory, he had tried everything from flying, to walking through walls, to stopping time, and as far as he could tell, he was not stuck in a dream. The laws of reality still applied wherever he was. He had even slapped himself for good measure (as well as a cat can anyway), and aside from a few odd looks from customers eating their lunch in a nearby cafe, nothing about his situation had changed.

This left him worried, because it meant that he had indeed dimension-hopped into the world of _Aria_. Either that or he had been given something at the party, and was now hallucinating. Neither possibility seemed appealing to him at the moment.

He tired hard to remember if anything tragic had happened in this particular anime, and to his great relief, he couldn't recall anything. In fact, _Aria_ was probably the happiest anime he had ever seen. Maybe he was lucky . There were much worse places one could have ended up after all. At least he hadn't wound up in the _Naruto_ universe or the _Dragonball_ universe – and God forbid, at least he hadn't been transformed into a girl! The _Aria_ universe wasn't too bad, all things considered; being a cat was really the only down side.

This brought him to the second undeniable truth about his situation: he had somehow wound up in the body of a cat. Having a tail, enhanced senses, and the ability to meow all seemed disturbingly natural to him right now, and it was not something he cared to dwell on. He wondered if he would now be attracted to other cats, and shivered at the thought.

"Lucky? Yeah, lucky..." He complained to no one in particular.

Not knowing what else to do, the young man continued following the tour group.

The tour guide was apparently oblivious to the feline that had been following her all day, and aside from a few paranoid glances over her shoulder every few hours, she gave no obvious indication that she knew that she was being followed. It seemed that being a cat had its advantages! People never notice animals as much as they should, he thought idly. As the tour group made its way across a small stone bridge, the young man abruptly came to stop, catching his reflection in the running water.

"Shit." The cat meowed. This was going to be more troublesome than he had anticipated.

He had already accepted by this point that he was probably going to spend the remainder of his days in this universe as a cat. He honestly didn't want to get involved in the plot of the anime. He rather enjoyed being independent, and as far as he could remember, everything worked out fine in _Aria_ without any kind of third party intervention. He'd probably just screw things up anyway by trying to interact with the plot.

He also wanted to avoid danger as much as possible, and Akari got herself into dangerous situations a number of times throughout the series. The thought of ghost women dressed in black funeral gowns and fox gods with a taste for sushi did not bode well for him. Nope! He wanted nothing to do with any of it!

However, as he gazed at his reflection in the running water, he knew that God, if there was a God, truly hated him.

Somehow, out of all the cats on Aqua, he had ended up inside the body of the one cat who was essential to the plot of the anime: Aria, the President of Aria Company.

**A/N: I just now finished watching the Aria anime, and I felt compelled to write this. As you've probably already deduced, this fic is slightly AU. Earth's environment was destroyed, and Aqua was colonized out of necessity for humanity's survival. This will probably remain a oneshot, as I'm currently working on a separate story that I will be publishing soon.  
**


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